Order of tags matters?

[tarsierspectral]

 

I've already answered this question somewhere else.

 

This is a quote from the latest Alamy blog about tagging 

 

"Try to avoid adding alphabetical lists of tags. Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order, which is why we’d recommend adding phrases / multi-word tags where appropriate."

 

​The answers people are getting from CR are confusing.  One wonderers if anybody actually knows!

 

Pearl

 

I don't find it confusing.  Order of supertags doesn't matter.  It's the order of the other tags that matter as supertags only make up 10 of your up to 50 tags.

 

Jill

 

 

But Joe just got this reply form Alamy:

 

"The order of tags and supertags is not relevant to the search results and they carry the same weighting in search results regardless of order. Tags are ordered by when they were added so the tags you add first are at the top."

[Jill Morgan]

 

 

I've already answered this question somewhere else.

 

This is a quote from the latest Alamy blog about tagging 

 

"Try to avoid adding alphabetical lists of tags. Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order, which is why we’d recommend adding phrases / multi-word tags where appropriate."

 

​The answers people are getting from CR are confusing.  One wonderers if anybody actually knows!

 

Pearl

 

I don't find it confusing.  Order of supertags doesn't matter.  It's the order of the other tags that matter as supertags only make up 10 of your up to 50 tags.

 

Jill

 

 

But Joe just got this reply form Alamy:

 

"The order of tags and supertags is not relevant to the search results and they carry the same weighting in search results regardless of order. Tags are ordered by when they were added so the tags you add first are at the top."

 

 

I missed that one.  so two different answers from Alamy.  Hmmmm. Have to send a real specific email to contributor services.  Won't hear back till tomorrow, but we will see what they say. Can't be both ways, but we shall see. 

 

Jill

[Doc]

Surely, if the order of tags matters, Alamy must give us the ability to move the tag positions around??

 

Kumar

[Pearl]

Surely, if the order of tags matters, Alamy must give us the ability to move the tag positions around??

 

Kumar

 

+1

 

I said pretty much the same thing somewhere else in this forum.  I just don't know what to believe at the moment.

 

Pearl

[Colblimp]

the trouble is, I add tags as they pop into my head, and often add additional ones a few minutes/hours/later when the word I was struggling to recall finally comes to me. I can't see an obvious way of arranging the final order.

Geoff

That's exactly what happens to me - I always think of keywords after the fact, so finding a way to arrange the tags in order is relatively important.

[Phil Robinson]

As I understand it the order of the tags doesn't matter in the sense of importance, it's about the proximity. If you have 'young' and 'woman' or 'golden' 'gate' and 'bridge' next to each other, the image will do better in a search for 'young woman' or 'Golden Gate Bridge' than if they were randomly ordered.

When the new system came out, the tags had been moved to alphabetical order, which spoilt this. After feedback they reverted to original order.

I don't believe (I might be wrong) that the first tags actually have more importance than the later ones.

[digi2ap]

My understanding is that the order of single word tags is not relevant but the choice of words and the word order in multi-word tags is.   

[Pearl]

As I understand it the order of the tags doesn't matter in the sense of importance, it's about the proximity. If you have 'young' and 'woman' or 'golden' 'gate' and 'bridge' next to each other, the image will do better in a search for 'young woman' or 'Golden Gate Bridge' than if they were randomly ordered.

When the new system came out, the tags had been moved to alphabetical order, which spoilt this. After feedback they reverted to original order.

I don't believe (I might be wrong) that the first tags actually have more importance than the later ones.

 

+1

 

Fully agree but this new IM makes it difficult to achieve.

 

Pearl

[NYCat]

I decided to take a look at my old snow leopards as they fell dramatically from the first two pages after the new search engine appeared. I was trying to make Panthera uncia a supertag but each time I saved I would get uncia Panthera. I kept unchecking and saving and checking in different orders and one of them finally behaved. It even put them into one supertag in the correct order. They had appeared separately before. Then on the other similar image at one point when I saved all my duplicate tags disappeared and I was left with 50 tags after having many, many more. They have told us it is not possible to make that happen. Ha. This is the most amazing confusion. I will be interested to see what happens to my snow leopards tomorrow. 

 

Paulette

[ColdCoffee]

The search engine must have changed then .. the order of the keywords used to matter. I did some experimenting, and moving around the keywords mattered. If I had fewer keywords it also made the photo show up earlier in the search. That may have changed too.

[Guest Stockfotoart]

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[Guest Stockfotoart]

On 7.2.2017 at 11:10, GS-Images said:

 

On 7.2.2017 at 10:33, Stockfotoart said:

 

As for tag order - We're given conflicting information . 

 

Geoff.

 

 

.

[RedSnapper]

From the Alamy blog:

"Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order"

[Guest Stockfotoart]

On 7.2.2017 at 11:48, RedSnapper said:

From the Alamy blog:

 

"Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order"

.

[Guest Stockfotoart]

On 7.2.2017 at 11:48, GS-Images said:

 

On 7.2.2017 at 11:40, Stockfotoart said:

 

On 7.2.2017 at 11:10, GS-Images said:

 

On 7.2.2017 at 10:33, Stockfotoart said:

 

As for tag order - We're given conflicting information . 

 

Geoff.

 

 

 

Hi Geoff

 

would you mind giving evidence for that.

 

In this discussion Joe (#13) quoted alamy clearly: the order of tags doesn't matter.

 

So where did alamy say anything else - officially!

 

thanks

 

 

I didn't mean that Alamy have necessarily given us conflicting information, as I'm not sure. I meant that either Alamy or other contributors have said that Alamy have told them different things.     It does make it hard to know the facts though when people insist they have been told opposing things. I think it's often a case of misinterpretation.

 

Geoff.

 

 

.

[spacecadet]

 

From the Alamy blog:

 

"Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order"

this doesn't concern one word tags - this statements says that in ONE multi word tag proximity matters but it doesn't say that the first tag weightens heavier than the last one

 

I think we're conflating tag and search.

How you order words in a tag is fixed. You don't determine the order of words in a customer search.

[Guest Stockfotoart]

On 7.2.2017 at 11:52, GS-Images said:

 

On 7.2.2017 at 11:51, Stockfotoart said:

 

On 7.2.2017 at 11:48, RedSnapper said:

From the Alamy blog:

 

"Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order"

this doesn't concern one word tags - this statements says that in ONE multi word tag proximity matters but it doesn't say that the first tag weightens heavier than the last one

 

 

I think it's badly worded to be honest. it says a multi-word search, but that's not the same as a multi-word tag.

 

Geoff.

 

 

deleted

 

[Guest Stockfotoart]

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[Guest Stockfotoart]

Thanks for posting that Stockfotoart, that's all very helpful.

 

That's the way I thought it worked, but it's nice to see it confirmed so clearly straight from the horse's mouth.  

 

Geoff.

 

very welcome Geoff

[tarsierspectral]

answers of contributor support:

 

Q does the order of tags matter?

 

A  The order of tags doesn’t really matter, if you have a tag that you think is particularly relevant to an image then you should make it a supertag.

 

Q  if yes is the first tag the most important or the last one? (because the order of adding tags is reverse to how hey show finally up)

A    Same as above.

 

Q how can I reorder tags once they show up?

A  There is no way for you to change the order of tags but as the order isn’t relevant to the search results then there is no need to change it.

 

Q Does the order of supertags matter?

A    Like tags, the order of supertags is not important.

 

Q  if i add a multi word tag for example "Berlin Wall" one tag does this effect the appearance of the image if the customer searches for "Berlin Wall", if yes how?

 

A  Multi-word tags are useful and we recommend using them. We are always tweaking our search engine but at the moment using relevant phrases will slightly improve your overall ‘score’ as to where your images appear in the search result. This doesn’t mean that your images will appear much higher up in a search result than someone else’s images with the separate tags ‘Berlin’ and ‘wall’ as this is just one of the many factors that determines the images placement.

 

But then why two of my images, which are of identical subject and have exactly the same tags and supertags don't show close to each other?  One shows up as the first image in the search result and the other shows up in position 79.  The difference is that the tags are not in the same order (as it's impossible to do so) and the one that shows in first place was uploaded pre new engine and pre new IM.  

[Jill Morgan]

I too received my answer from Alamy, and I think some of us (me included) are confusing order with proximity.

 

If I have"toronto" & "ontario" as my first two tags (not supertags) it doesn't have any more importance than someone who has "toronto" & " ontario as their last two tags as long as we both have them next to each other which equals proximity.

 

So the only time you need to type your keywords in the correct order is when you want those two or three keywords next to each other which is what I was referring to as order. This is when copying from another image might not be wise if the keywords you want in your new image need to be next to each other but they aren't in the image you are copying from. Then you should type them in.

 

 

 

 

From the Alamy blog:

"Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order"

this doesn't concern one word tags - this statements says that in ONE multi word tag proximity matters but it doesn't say that the first tag weightens heavier than the last one

 

 

No it doesn't! The blog talks about multi-word search, NOT multi-word tag. To take the example I just gave: Alamy means that images with the tags city and hall - placed next to each other - should come earlier in the search results than having those two words separated by others in between when a client is searching for city hall:

 

Adviced by Alamy:  city, hall, Bruges, Flanders, Belgium      COMPARED TO    Not adviced by Alamy:  city, Bruges, Flanders, hall, Belgium

 

Unfortunately - as I stated in my previous reply - proximity doesn't seem to work.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Perhaps Phillippe this is where your great rank comes in.  and I also think they are still trying to perfect the search.

 

Jill

[Guest Stockfotoart]

 

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[Jill Morgan]

This was my email to Alamy:

 

There seems to be some confusion between contributors on whether keyword order matters. 

Here on the blog we are told placement of keywords is important:

"Try to avoid adding alphabetical lists of tags. Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order, which is why we’d recommend adding phrases / multi-word tags where appropriate."

But then someone recieved an email with this info:

"The order of tags and supertags is not relevant to the search results and they carry the same weighting in search results regardless of order. Tags are ordered by when they were added so the tags you add first are at the top."

 

The two statements contradict each other.  Does order matter or not?  Should I be sure that "toronto" and "ontario" are next to each other, or does it matter? Will a search for "toronto ontario" give my image the same position whether they two tags are next to each other or 5 tags apart?

Jil

 

 

This is their response:

 

Hi Jill,

 

The order isn’t as important as the proximity; for example if you had an image of New York City, and tagging it with Beautiful, Streets, People, Metropolitan, however you ordered your tags, you would want New, York, and City to be next to each other within the tags, to make sure the image is optimally searchable;

NOT New, Beautiful, City, Streets, People, York, Metropolian

BUT Beautiful, Streets, New, York, City, Metropolitan, People

 

Ideally you would make New York City a Supertag Phrase.

 

So for Toronto, if you were tagging it as Toronto Ontario, you would want the tags to be next to each other if separate, or as a phrase.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks,

 

Siobhan

Contributor Relations

 

 

 

So whether the two tags are first, tenth or 40th, doesn't matter as long as they stay next to each other.

 

Jill

[Joe]

I`m off for a lie down in a "darkened room"; or should that be a room, darkened,?

[tarsierspectral]

This was my email to Alamy:

 

 

There seems to be some confusion between contributors on whether keyword order matters.

 

Here on the blog we are told placement of keywords is important:

 

"Try to avoid adding alphabetical lists of tags. Proximity of one tag compared to another used in a multi-word search can have an effect on where it appears in the sort order, which is why we’d recommend adding phrases / multi-word tags where appropriate."

But then someone recieved an email with this info:

 

"The order of tags and supertags is not relevant to the search results and they carry the same weighting in search results regardless of order. Tags are ordered by when they were added so the tags you add first are at the top."

 

The two statements contradict each other. Does order matter or not? Should I be sure that "toronto" and "ontario" are next to each other, or does it matter? Will a search for "toronto ontario" give my image the same position whether they two tags are next to each other or 5 tags apart?

 

Jil

 

This is their response:

 

Hi Jill,

The order isn’t as important as the proximity; for example if you had an image of New York City, and tagging it with Beautiful, Streets, People, Metropolitan, however you ordered your tags, you would want New, York, and City to be next to each other within the tags, to make sure the image is optimally searchable;

NOT New, Beautiful, City, Streets, People, York, Metropolian

BUT Beautiful, Streets, New, York, City, Metropolitan, People

Ideally you would make New York City a Supertag Phrase.

So for Toronto, if you were tagging it as Toronto Ontario, you would want the tags to be next to each other if separate, or as a phrase.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Siobhan

Contributor Relations

 

 

So whether the two tags are first, tenth or 40th, doesn't matter as long as they stay next to each other.

 

Jill

Why would then my two identically tagged images show far apart in the search result? The only difference is the tag order (and when they were uploaded).